The college has the unique distinction of having two nationally-designated language flagship programs within the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures—one in Korean and the other in Chinese. It also provides leadership for the Hawaiʻi Language Roadmap Initiative, which is an effort to bring together employers and educators to address the growing demand of language skills and cultural expertise in the workforce.

Chung reported that the Korean Language Flagship Center is experiencing great progress and success in its pre-college language programs at Roosevelt and Moanalua High Schools.

Jiang noted that student recruitment for the new Chinese flagship is exceeding expectations.

Dina Yoshimi, who leads UH’s involvement in the Hawaiʻi Language Roadmap Initiative, shared news of efforts to build teams from members of government, the private sector and community organizations in order to most effectively train language proficient workforces. The team is finding that language needs are prevalent in many obvious and not-so-obvious areas, ranging from the public arena to private enterprise.